12 of the Best Tech Newsletters to Subscribe to in 2018

Searching for the best tech newsletters to subscribe to in 2018? The pace of technological development can make it very hard to stay up to date (as well as time-consuming). Throw in the tremendous amounts of great content produced every day, and you can really struggle to keep abreast of everything. That’s why the curated newsletter is making a comeback and is so popular now!

The concept itself is pretty simple – curated newsletters are just emails that contain a selection of popular, interesting or noteworthy content. Many of the best tech newsletters out there will help you separate the wheat from the chaff while also saving you some precious hours (immediately cutting down your search and scan time).

With that in mind, we have compiled the following list of the 11 best tech newsletters (and web culture newsletters) around. The topics covered in them range from A.I., to the death of blogging (again!). Some of the newsletters provide roundups, whereas others go in-depth on particular subjects. One notable example even takes you outside the Valley bubble to see what is happening in tech in less represented areas of the globe.

The best tech newsletters to check out in 2018

Included here for the simple reason that we’re WordPress folks at heart. With this in mind, we introduce wpMail.me as arguably the best WordPress newsletter available at the moment.

The vitals:Free. Delivered weekly. Includes a roundup of important WordPress news and articles.

Curated by Cozmoslabs to provide a one-stop WordPress weekly digest. Does what it says on the tin and more. Aside from news and articles, there are great sections on themes, the best tutorials, and a roundup of the most interesting podcasts and videos floating around the WordPress world.

As surprising as it may seem, the tech-sphere is inhabited by much more than WordPress blogs about parenting, or social media, or Bitcoin. Fortunately, The Download from MIT’s technology review can provide tremendous insight into the emerging tech world. The tagline is literally “what’s up in emerging technology?”

The vitals:Free. Delivered daily. Includes a roundup of how emerging technologies are being implemented in the wild.

Curated by the innovative MIT Technology Review team to provide up-to-date information on the world of emerging technology. As a result, you will get different stories to those appearing on the website with links from academia and news outlets.

If you would like to be at the bleeding edge of technology then this is the best newsletter you can find. It promises to give you the “what’s up in emerging technology.”

The Tedium is the first newsletter on this list that stretches both the notion of curated and technology. It doesn’t provide a roundup of links from around the web, but instead finds an obscure story and dives deeply into it. The stories are centered around the web and digital culture, but they take a longer view with articles on NES cartridges and disc rot.

The vitals:Free. Delivered twice a week. In-depth look at one story rather than a collection of links.

Curated by Ernie Smith formally of ShortFormBlog to create a record of interesting stories that get lost in the information avalanche. Ernie is something of a web culture archaeologist with a knack for turning up stories that might otherwise be forgotten. There’s also a great article on the decline of blogging (spoiler alert: it does say that blogging is dead … again).

Another one on our list of the best tech newsletters, the Exponential View is a curated newsletter focused specifically on exponential technologies. As a result, you will find a ton of information here on the future and how it is being shaped. Following a standard curated format with lists of links pulled from universities as well as news outlets, it presents a synopsis to make everything that little bit easier. Plus there’s emojis.

The vitals:Free. Weekly. You are going to find information on the game changing technologies from the near future, but also the best stories from the worlds of A.I., cryptocurrency, and future media to name a few.

Curated by Azeem Azhar from the Harvard Business Review’s editorial board. An investor in tech startups with a particular interest in A.I. It comes with a nice side of humor, and one of my favorite sections is “Short Morsels to Appear Smart at Dinner Parties.”

While emojis are not the most important part of a newsletter, they add some sparkle nevertheless. This newsletter also has the personal touch of Ben Evans from VC firm Andreeson Horowitz. Furthermore, this is the most oft-cited tech newsletter doing the rounds.

The vitals:Free. Weekly (on Sundays). A great collection of news sources and blog articles that Ben found interesting.

Curated by Ben Evans. For one thing, it has a pretty tight focus on technology and emerging changes, but it remains broad in terms of subjects. A large roundup of the best stuff you will read about tech from social media to iOS stuff.

Looking to stay cool without doing too much hard work? The Bizarro Devs newsletter is the answer. Curated with an interest in web culture and WordPress. The whole point of the newsletter is to find the coolest and (sometimes) obscure links to help you cheat your way to cool.

The vitals:Free. Published weekly. You will find a list of awesome links that were either missed by discerning tech lovers, or are about to explode.

Curated by the team at ThemeIsle (including me). We dive deeply into the web’s vast oceans to find cool links. There is no subject we won’t touch from Doge cryptocurrency to data visualizations of internet seconds (if you get to the end of the email visualization, you will earn a medal). This newsletter will help you earn the most Slack reactions in your office.

The best tech newsletters tend to have clever names. But it’s not only about the name … the information in the Center for Data Innovation newsletter is pretty incredible. Particularly for those of you who have a strong interest in all facets of data.

The vitals:Free. Weekly. With a focus on data and related information, you will find an amazing amount of information about technology here.

Curated by The Center for Data Innovation. Each week, their newsletter summarizes the most important data-related news, features original articles and interviews with global experts, and showcases some of the most interesting data sets, data visualizations, and books available.

This is a truly well-rounded newsletter for web denizens. Furthermore, it is one of my favorites on this list of best tech newsletters. Not only is the newsletter curated with love from Adam, it is also coupled with an incredible list of web design and development links. Plus, it has over 45,000 subscribers. All links slathered liberally in humor before they leave the office.

The vitals:Free. Daily. A broad list of links from web design to front- and back-end development via WordPress and more.

Curated by Adam at SitePoint. Great if you’re looking for an example of a quality daily newsletter. Every daily newsletter should be set up like this because the link descriptions are short, with some of the best jokes to be found in the web design space.

A.I. is arguably the dominant emerging tech topic at the present time, so, for this reason, we have another newsletter with a strong A.I. focus. This is because we all know that the next rulers of the earth will be A.I. So subscribe to this one and stay ahead of the game.

The vitals:Free. Weekly. With all the industry’s latest research, chatter and news.

Curated by Jack Clark formally of ZDNet, The Register, and Bloomberg (now over at House of Elon’s OpenAI).

One of the things we expect from the best tech newsletters is to help us find cool new things to play with, and this is where Sidebar.io comes into the picture. Web designers couldn’t find a better or more succinct newsletter. Although there can be an occasional link outside the main focus, this newsletter is primarily interesting to UI designers, CSSers, typographers and so on.

The vitals:Free. Daily. Just five of the best links regarding web design.

Curated by Sacha Greif with help from users. I like the fact that you can easily submit links for consideration. You will love that it is short – Sidebar.io includes just five links per day. As a result, this is a nice newsletter with a great user-centered approach. You will find cool new apps, articles, and resources about UI design, typography, CSS, user research, and all the other facets of design.

Another very special newsletter concerning all things WordPress. Master WP started in 2017 and it’s released only around 50 issues so far. That traction tho… WordPress lovers need to jump on this one in order to stay current but also to get insights from outside the WordPress bubble.

The vitals:Free. Weekly. Five links with a synopsis from the curators.

Curated by WordPress professionals Alex Denning and Ben Gillbanks. Each issue provides a tight, neat synopsis of five links. I like the article synopsis because it complements my laziness. I feel I still got a taste of something great. Not only will you receive the biggest WordPress news but you will also receive stories about new apps, emerging websites and more. An incredible amount of diversity in just five links.

This is one of the best tech newsletters around that expands your horizons in many ways. Other Valleys is all about the world outside of Silicon Valley, where incredible entrepreneurial businesses and creative projects thrive despite not being in the spotlight.

The vitals:Free. Weekly. Great stories supported by links.

Curated by Anjali Ramachandran into a list of links with detailed synopses to illustrate the burgeoning tech scene outside the usual ecosystem. Great focus on India and the Asian continent, but also contains stories of innovation from across Africa and Europe. In like manner, it also has an incredible focus on women in tech.

So that’s my list of the best tech newsletters to subscribe to in 2018. They do pretty much cover every aspect of the tech sector, and still give you plenty of time for an extra coffee.

Have I missed any that you love? Please drop names and links in the comments so I can check them out.